


breathtaker

by soulofme



Series: sheith sentence prompts [23]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Band Fic, Breaking Up & Making Up, Chronic Illness, M/M, shiro has muscular dystrophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 04:22:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15428922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulofme/pseuds/soulofme
Summary: You might kill me with desireWind me tighter than a wireIt's something that you do to meI run away like mercury-Sorry, Nothing But Thieves[Or, Keith and Shiro fall apart before they fall together.]





	breathtaker

**Author's Note:**

> sentence prompt #99: don’t let me love you again.

**NOW**

 

Keith punches him in the mouth.

Shiro doesn’t do anything to avoid it. He sees it, the tight curl of his hand, and feels it not even a second later. There’s not much sound other than the steady _drip, drip, drip_ of his blood hitting the floor. He tastes it then, strong and metallic, and listens to Keith’s ragged breathing in front of him.

Pidge and Matt are gone. Hunk and Lance are gone. Everyone’s gone, and the only one to bear witness to this is the moon, hanging high in the sky and streaming light through the open window.

“Fuck you, Takashi,” Keith spits, all venom, and turns on his heel like he’s going to walk out of Shiro’s life forever.

Shiro can’t let him.

 

 

**THEN**

Shiro’s mother puts him in piano lessons when he’s ten.

He wakes up at the crack of dawn every Saturday and gets packed into the car with his brother Ryou. They play make-believe until Mom pulls up before the gigantic building and gets out to walk them inside.

He doesn’t remember his instructor much. He remembers Ryou banging the keys in frustration and storming out because Shiro had mastered it so easily. He remembers the feeling of shame when he nails another piece, and he remembers his mother asking him to play for her as she lays on her death bed.

He remembers the funeral, staring down at her casket and wondering why her cheeks looked so red if she was supposed to be dead. His grandfather had put a hand on his shoulder and promised to take care of him now.

Ryou keeps going to piano but Shiro drops out. When he’s sixteen, he picks up guitar instead.

“You just have to be the best, don’t you?” Ryou had spat at him, shoving him back so hard that his head knocked against the doorframe. “You’re so fucking _greedy,_ Takashi.”

Greedy.

It hadn’t hurt as much as it should’ve.

 

**NOW**

 

Shiro wipes the blood off his face and picks himself up. Dusts himself off and follows Keith out of the door. But he’s too late and Keith’s gone, gone, _gone_.

It’s Pidge he finds instead, her expression unreadable. He sees the way her body tenses when she catches sight of him, the way her lips curl down into a deep frown.

“What did you do?” she asks, like she knows it’s his fault.

She’s not exactly wrong.

 

 

**THEN**

Shiro meets Matthew Holt in college.

He’s sitting on the steps of his residence hall, playing guitar until his fingers are cramped and his throat is sore from bitching his frustration at the sky. The only thing that makes Shiro stop is the shadow that falls over him and the quiet clearing of a throat.

“You’re really good,” the shadow says, and steps closer.

“I’m not,” Shiro says, half because he’s humble and half because he’s really _not_.

“Okay.” There’s a pause. “I’m Matt, by the way.”

“Shiro.”

And just like that, he’s in. He joins Matt’s garage band and doesn’t think twice about it. He meets Lance and Hunk, who play the drums and keyboard respectively, and Matt’s sister, Katie. She goes by Pidge, though, and she’s not in the band but hangs around so much Shiro forgets that.

It’s easy and Shiro’s happy, for a while.

Until he meets Keith.

 

 

**NOW**

The band breaks up.

Some fractures run so deep that there’s no way to repair them. Everyone blames him even if they won’t say it. Keith’s the best thing any of them ever had and Shiro fucked that up.

He packs his shit up and prepares to move out of the apartment he shares with Matt. He doesn’t expect Hunk to knock on the door and stand in the doorway like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed inside or not.

“You don’t have to leave,” Hunk says. He’s the only one to say so besides Matt. “You can stay.”

“There’s no reason to,” Shiro says, with an air of finality.

Hunk’s not so easily deterred.

“He’d want you to.” It’s a dirty move and Shiro flinches at it.

“Keith doesn’t want _me_.”

Hunk shifts nervously. He lets it go.

 

 

**THEN**

The thing is, Hunk has horrible stage fright. So bad, in fact, that he pukes his guts out at the slightest thought of performing. So he steps down and Lance takes his place. But now they need a drummer.

Enter Keith.

Keith, who’s Pidge’s friend and will only talk to her. Keith, who gets one good look at Shiro and acts like he’s too good for him.

Keith, who Shiro wants, immediately and indefinitely.

 

 

**NOW**

Shiro heads back home.

Home is a little house in the middle of nowhere. Pennsylvania. An idyllic country life, just like his grandfather wanted.

He’s dead now. Died a few years ago, when Shiro had been screaming his heart out into a microphone, playing guitar until his fingers bled, and Ryou had been at home, his life put on hold while he took care of their grandfather.

He knows Ryou’s resentful. They love each other, but they hate each other just as much. So when he knocks on the door, he’s prepared for the way Ryou just stands there and sizes him up.

“Well,” Ryou finally mutters, stepping back. “You coming in or what?”

They don’t talk about it right away. Ryou waits until they’re eating leftover takeout, when Shiro’s swallowing dry rice that scrapes its way down his throat.

“What happened?”

Shiro sets his container down and stares up at the ceiling. A broken spring in the couch digs into the base of his spine.

“I got greedy,” he says. Ryou’s quiet for a while.

Then, he laughs.

 

 

**THEN**

Shiro’s sitting on the roof of the apartment complex, trying to write a song. But nothing works, and he’s got ten pages of scribbled out words and a nub of a pencil pinched between his fingers.

He hears the door to the staircase opening and prepares for Matt to say something, maybe crack a joke at his expense. That doesn’t happen, though, because it’s Keith who sits down next to him and wiggles the notebook out of his hands.

“Having fun?” Keith asks, his voice low and even. Shiro swallows hard.

“Depends on how you define fun.”

Keith smiles. _Almost_ smiles, really, but it’s close enough that Shiro wants to count it. Will count it. He made Keith smile.

It shouldn’t make him as giddy as it does. But there goes his heart, hammering in his chest the longer he looks at Keith, at how he chews on the edge of his thumbnail as he scans over the page in front of him.

Keith scribbles something on the page and hands it back. He doesn’t wait for Shiro to read it before he gets up and heads back inside. It’s only when the door slams shut that Shiro looks down at the notebook.

 _Breathtaker, heartbreaker_.

He likes the sound of that.

 

 

**NOW**

Matt calls him a week after The Incident. He sounds nervous when Shiro picks up the phone, clearing his throat multiple times before he finally speaks.

“How’re you holding up?” Matt gets out.

“Fine,” Shiro says. It’s a boldfaced lie. They both know it.

Matt doesn’t call him out. Instead, he says:

“Keith’s gone.” A pause, like he’s waiting for Shiro to react. “He went back to his dad’s place.”

“Texas,” Shiro says. His voice cracks on the word.

“Shiro, what happened—”

“I have to go,” Shiro says, cutting him off and shutting him out.

He feels guilty about it, so guilty that he pukes right after. Thinks of Hunk as he does it, too, which only makes everything worse. Ryou watches him from the doorway before he steps in and sits next to him.

“What are you doing, Takashi?” his brother asks. The words sound distant, like they’re coming in from miles away.

Shiro wipes vomit away from the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t know.”

 

 

**THEN**

He dances around Keith, at first.

Keith doesn’t notice it. That’s what Shiro likes to think, anyway. If he does, he doesn’t say anything. They practice like they were meant to be together in this very moment, and when Pidge and Hunk cheer them on he finds himself smiling so _wide_.

Shiro turns, and Keith’s staring right at him. Unashamed, with sweat beading along his hairline and running down his neck, thin fingers wrapped tight around his drumsticks, a look of awe in his eyes.

They book their first gig that day, playing for a bachelor’s party at a seedy bar.

 

 

**NOW**

 

Shiro tries to move on.

There’s nothing else to do. Keith’s gone, and he took a chunk of Shiro with him. A chunk that he’ll never get back. So, Shiro lets him go. He lets Keith do whatever he wants because that’s what he’s always done.

He’s not surprised by the turn of events. Not really. He knew what to expect when he told Keith that he’d better off with someone else, someone who wasn’t broken and damaged. Someone whole. Someone not… _him_.

He saw the punch coming, he saw Keith storming off coming. But the band? Collateral damage in a fight that didn’t belong to anyone than him. Some days it hurts so bad that he wants to cave, move back to LA and tell everyone that he sucks, that he’s sorry and he loves them and _please, we can make this work_.

He doesn’t. He stays in Pennsylvania. He tends to Grandfather’s apple trees. He drinks beer on the porch and feels sorry for himself. He thinks of Keith every day.

He doesn’t move on. Not at all.

 

 

**THEN**

They get gigs fairly regularly. There’s a demand for them. People _want_ to hear them.

It feels like a dream. Shiro wakes up every morning, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It doesn’t. Not for a year, actually.

They’re playing for their biggest gig yet. Shiro’s backstage, tuning his guitar. The others are getting ready in their own ways. He’s so focused on his task that he doesn’t realize Keith’s standing next to him until he feels a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re gonna be great,” Keith says. He’s begun to open up to Shiro. He shows little pieces of himself here and there. Shiro likes it. More than he’s willing to admit.

“You too,” he says.

Keith kisses him. Soft, like he’s afraid Shiro will disappear. Then he grabs his drumsticks from the table and goes to wait behind the curtain.

Shiro makes it onto the stage. They get through half of their setlist before he rips the strap from around his neck and storms off. He doesn’t offer an explanation. He lets the others clean up his mess and hates himself for it.

Keith finds him not even ten minutes later, practically on fire. Shiro starts to walk away but Keith grabs him around the wrist and tugs him, hard enough that he stumbles.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?!” He’s screaming, a vein in his neck throbbing. Shiro feels dizzy with the thought of biting into it. “They’re not paying us now, jackass.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re _sorry_?” Keith snaps incredulously. “That’s all you’re gonna fucking say?”

He freezes then, like the fight’s been zapped out of him.

“What?” Shiro mutters.

“Are you doing this because I kissed you?” Keith asks. His voice is deceptively calm, like there’s another storm brewing inside of him.

“You deserve more,” Shiro says. He’s been thinking it since he got his eyes on Keith that first day. He wants him, more than anything, but Shiro recognizes his limits. Keith deserves more. An undisputable fact.

“I don’t want more,” Keith growls, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket. “I want _you_.”

The kiss hurts. Shiro chases the pain.

 

 

**NOW**

No one calls him again. Not Matt, or Hunk, or Lance or Pidge.

He never expected Keith to.

Shiro gets into a routine, two years after the band. He wakes up and tends to the trees and the garden, and sometimes he mows the lawns of their elderly neighbors. He fixes up their houses and plants them flowers and _does something_. Ryou stops giving him shit because he’s pulling his weight now.

It’s fine. Not the best. But it works and Shiro’s learning to accept things for what they are.

But then he drops a plate. Brushes it off as an accident and doesn’t tell Ryou about it. But plates become the remote, and the shampoo bottle, and eventually, himself.

Ryou figures it out eventually. He screams at Shiro for ten minutes straight before he launches himself into his arms and cries into his shoulder.

“Not again,” he says, and Shiro thinks of their mother, of their father and grandfather. “ _Not again_.”

Shiro goes to the doctor. He’s got a few years left at best. It’ll just go downhill from there.

“What do I do?” he asks. His doctor takes her glasses off and folds them into her pocket.

“Live,” she says, her voice soft.

 

 

**THEN**

Shiro is greedy.

It’s why it takes him a few months to tell Keith that he has muscular dystrophy, about how things get worse every day, but that he won’t let himself give up. Keith listens, hands clenched into fists on his lap. Shiro licks his dry lips and continues.

“I know I’m asking a lot,” he says, cautious, and sees Keith’s eyes narrow. “You don’t have to stay. Not if it’s too much.”

Keith pulls him into a hug, squeezing tight like he wants to melt their bodies into one. Shiro tangles his fingers in Keith’s hair and breathes him in, memorizes the feel of him so he’ll remember him when he eventually _does_ leave.

“I hate you,” Keith whispers. He’s crying.

“Then act like it,” Shiro whispers back. He’s crying too.

Keith never does.

 

 

**NOW**

He’s outside throwing rocks into a bucket and leaning his chair back on two legs when he sees the car pull into the driveway. It’s black, nondescript, and Shiro doesn’t recognize it.

But he recognizes Keith, who steps out with a duffle bag slung over his shoulders. The car pulls away and Keith just stands in the driveway with his hands tucked into his pockets.

Keith walks all the way to the porch and stops. He looks the same, which is the worst part. The only thing different about him now is the pink scar on his cheek. Shiro stares at it for a long time, gathering the courage to speak.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

Keith tilts his head to the side, regarding him silently.

“Ryou called me,” he says.

“My brother called you?”

Keith rolls his eyes. “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

Shiro chews at the inside of his cheek.

“Did he tell you?” It’s a likely possibility.

“You look pretty pathetic right now,” Keith says instead. He pulls up a second chair and sits on it like he belongs there.

It’s a troubling thought. Even now, Shiro feels the _want_ coursing through his veins. He can’t go down that road again. For Keith’s sake.

“Keith—”

“I didn’t hate you,” Keith says. “I don’t think I can.”

Shiro lets the words sink in. He waits for Keith to take them back like they’re a cruel joke he’s playing. He doesn’t, and Shiro’s ashamed that he thought Keith _would_.

“Don’t let me love you again,” Shiro says. Feels like a hero when he gets the words out, because Keith is here but Shiro’s not dragging him down with him. Not again.

Keith doesn’t reply. Shiro wonders if he even heard him.

 

 

**THEN**

Loving Keith is like opening a present, over and over again. Each piece Shiro removes reveals more. It’s crazy, he thinks to himself, how perfectly they fit together.

“Does he make you happy?”

Shiro starts at the question. They’re at his apartment. It’s movie night. Hunk and Pidge went out to get some last-minute snacks and Matt and Keith are trying to figure out how to make halfway decent nachos in the kitchen.

Shiro blinks and looks at Lance. He’s flipping idly through the channels, eyes glued to the screen, but Shiro knows he’s waiting for an answer.

“More than anything,” he says.

“Don’t hurt him,” Lance says.

Before, when they just formed the band, it would’ve seem weird. He and Keith had some kind of rivalry before, but they’re thicker than thieves now. Almost as close as Keith and Pidge.

Or…Keith and Shiro.

“I won’t,” Shiro says.

He breaks that promise.

 

 

**NOW**

Ryou sets Keith up in the guest bedroom and comes back into the living room, where Shiro is glaring at nothing in particular. He feels like a damn child.

“Why did you bring him here?”

“I’m sick of you moping around,” Ryou snaps. He points down the hall, down to where _Keith_ is. “Either man up or get the fuck over it.”

“You don’t have the right to say that to me!” Shiro’s on his feet now. “He deserves someone better! He deserves someone _healthy_!”

“Is that what you think?”

Their heads snap to the doorway. It would’ve been comical, Shiro thinks, if Keith hadn’t been glaring at him like he wanted to punch his lights out. Again.

“You think you know what I deserve, Takashi?!” Keith hisses. The use of his name feels like slap to his face. “You don’t know _shit_. You didn’t know it then, and you don’t know it now.”

Ryou clears his throat.

“You two need to talk,” he says, stepping back. He doesn’t look at Shiro as he begins to walk out of the room, but he stops to whisper something to Keith before he goes.

Shiro rakes a hand through his hair.

“I’m here because I want to be,” Keith says. He’s not yelling but he’s not any less furious.

“Keith, I can’t do this,” Shiro says. “You should go home.”

“And do what? Twiddle my thumbs and wait for you to get your head out of your ass?” He steps forward, gets in Shiro’s face and pokes him hard in the chest. Right over his heart. “I’m not going anywhere, so get used to me.”

Shiro swallows hard. He gives in.

 

 

**THEN**

He’s lying on his back with Keith on top of him, ear pressed to his chest. Shiro rubs his hand down Keith’s spine, feels how his shirt drags beneath his fingertips. Keith shifts, holding his head up on one hand while he puts the other on Shiro’s heart.

“Shiro?” He’s quiet. Shiro nods encouragingly.

“What’s up?” he asks.

“I’m not giving up on you,” he says. There’s so much conviction in his words that Shiro’s throat feels like there’s a lump in it. He’s overwhelmed with a flood of emotions and he doesn’t know what to do with them.

“Keith…”

“I know you keep thinking I’m going to get sick of you,” Keith’s voice cracks, right on the last word, and Shiro finds himself pulling him close and kissing his forehead. “But I’m staying. No matter what.”

“Okay, whatever you want,” Shiro says.

 _Thank you, please don’t leave me_ , he doesn’t say.

 

 

**NOW**

Shiro doesn’t know how long Keith’s here for.

He wakes up every day and expects him to be gone, to really leave this time. But Keith’s there every morning, just like how the sun rises. It’s crazy.

It’s crazy, and Shiro loves it.

Keith’s sitting in the kiddie pull Ryou had dragged out of the garage early in the summer. It’s from when they were kids, and somehow managed to survive the years. Keith’s stripped down to his boxers and staring at Shiro, looking more and more like a wet cat the longer Shiro looks.

“What happened to your face?” Shiro asks. He’s pulling weeds. He hears how Keith splashes himself with the water.

“Bar fight,” Keith says. “He had a knife.”

“Jesus,” Shiro drops the bundle of weeds in his hands. “Are you kidding me?”

“No,” Keith says. He sinks down so that the only thing Shiro can see are his knees.

“Jesus,” Shiro gets out again. It’s the only thing he feels he _can_ say. “Why’d he do it?”

Keith’s quiet for a moment.

“He was talking about the band,” Keith answers. “He was talking about _you_. People spun a lot of stories about why you left. I had to do something.”

Shiro clenches his jaw. _Hard_. “You shouldn’t have done anything.”

“Why?” Keith pops up then. “Because you’re not worth protecting? Because I deserve more? Because you’re afraid of letting someone else shoulder your weight? Tell me, Takashi, because I don’t fucking _get_ you.”

“You still call me that,” Shiro murmurs. “Takashi.”

“Is that all you got out of that?” Keith snarls incredulously. “You know, I ask myself every goddamn day why I still love you.”

Shiro sits back on his haunches, his knees sinking into wet dirt. He doesn’t care. Can’t find it in himself to care, not when Keith’s saying he loves him. Still. Like he never stopped, not even when Shiro broke his heart because he couldn’t stand the thought of Keith leaving.

“It hurts, sometimes,” Shiro starts, “how much I love you. I never wanted to hurt you. You meant everything to me. You _mean_ everything to me. I just want you to be happy. I don’t want you to worry about me every second. I want you to live your life. And if that means it’s not with me, then so be it.”

Keith steps out of the pool and stomps towards him. Gets on his knees, so they’re face to face, and gives Shiro nowhere to look but right at him.

“I want my life to be with you,” Keith mutters. “I want to be happy with _you_. But you won’t let me, and it drives me crazy.”

Shiro grabs him then, because Ryou’s always been right, he’s _greedy_ , and he kisses him. Pours all of his feelings into it and hopes that Keith picks up on it.

Keith’s the one to pull away, the one to rest their foreheads together and dig his fingers into Shiro’s shoulders.

“Don’t make me leave,” Keith says. “Not when I promised I wouldn’t.”

“I won’t,” Shiro says.

He means it this time.


End file.
